Theater review: Merrimack Rep's 'Moon for the Misbegotten' is more comic than heartbreaking

Thursday

Apr 30, 2009 at 12:01 AMApr 30, 2009 at 9:56 PM

One can't help but love the Merrimack Repertory Theatre for having the courage to slip Eugene O'Neill's "A Moon for the Misbegotten" into the final slot of their season.

David Brooks Andrews

One can't help but love the Merrimack Repertory Theatre for having the courage to slip Eugene O'Neill's "A Moon for the Misbegotten" into the final slot of their season.

Like so many American classics, this play, first performed in 1947, is not staged all that often, partly because light, contemporary comedies seem a safer bet in these precarious times. And partly because it takes a couple of remarkable actors to give the final scenes the scope and psychological weight needed to bring the play home.

Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst as the two leads in a 1973 Broadway production, with a TV version available on DVD, showed how the play could soar, as they set the standard by which every James Tyrone Jr. and Josie Hogan have been measured ever since.

The play begins as a broad Irish comedy with intense sparring between Josie who calls herself "an ugly overgrown lump of a woman" and her father Phil Hogan, whom she refers to as a "bad tempered old hornet." They're poor Connecticut pig farmers in 1923 and are constantly at each other's throats when they aren't scheming together to swindle others out of their money and property.

The play calls for a tall, strong earth mother to play the role of Josie, someone who can put her feisty father in is his place, will threaten him with a club when necessary, and looks like she's capable of hard farm work. Merrimack's choice for the role, Kate Udall, fits the part well. She's tall, big-boned, husky-voiced and can give as good as she gets. She's also beautiful with a long mane of red hair, which serves her well later in the play.

Gordon Joseph Weiss makes for a scrappy, fiery Phil, and by contrast his short stature makes Udall look all the taller. Phil is such a mean-spirited father that early in the play his son Mike runs away from the farm, with a little assistance from Josie. Karl Baker Olson plays Mike with an intense fear of his father. Phil has driven all three of his sons away; Josie is the only child tough enough to stick around.

Much of the play's humor comes from Josie and Phil bragging about their scheming and then displaying it in a very funny scene when their extremely wealthy neighbor, T. Stedman Harder, drops by in his pretentious riding clothes with a reasonable complaint. He's played by John Kooi with hilarious primness and outrage as they make mincemeat of him, while their rich landlord and sometimes friend, James Tyrone Jr., hides inside their dilapidated house howling with laughter.

Under director Edward Morgan, the Merrimack troupe handles the broad comic scenes well, but they run into some trouble when the play shifts into a deeply poignant tale of guilt, longing and, ultimately, forgiveness. In one sense, the play is about Josie being forced to drop the veil of bluster, humor and pretence of being a loose woman and to accept her vulnerability. And it's about James being forced to drop the veil of alcohol that has kept him from facing the meaninglessness of his life as an unsuccessful actor who's drinking himself to death and who let his mother down. It's especially important for this transition to be clear as the veils are slowly lowered so we can feel how deeply both of these characters ache within.

It's potentially a very moving scene when James shows up two hours late to sit with Josie on her front porch and talk under the moon. They both yearn in unrealistic ways to be each other's lover, but something more meaningful happens in the end.

Unfortunately, Udall never quite lets go of all Josie's bluster and posturing to accept her quieter, heartbroken self. This is most noticeable in her voice, which maintains the put-on tones and patterns of the comic opening when she needs to talk more honestly and naturally to James in order for the production to reach it's emotional climax.

Michael Canavan brings a gentlemanly polish to James, in the scenes when he's not totally drunk. It's a quality that O'Neill wanted brought to the character, who is based on his brother and whom he struggled mightily to forgive by writing the play. Josie, in a sense, offers the forgiveness that he was never able to.

Canavan does well at telling his character's guilt-ridden tale to Josie, though at one point in the porch scene he needs a little more emotional connection with what he's saying. Ideally, the anguish of these lead characters should loom larger over the production and us.

Scenic designer Bill Clarke creates a wonderfully evocative rundown farmhouse, but he angles it in a way that oddly focuses our attention on a large, empty, blue scrim the sky on which very little happens, other than the shadow of Josie brushing her hair and at night the twinkling of stars. Lighting designer Beverly Emmons decided not to project a moon on the sky and instead simply lets moonlight hit the couple's faces.

Merrimack gives "Moon" a polished exterior as their cast captures its humor, but a deeper exploration of the lead characters' inner lives their heartache, fears and guilt would allow the forgiveness at the end to have more emotional impact.

WHAT:

"A Moon for the Misbegotten" by Eugene O'Neill

WHEN:

Through May 17

WHERE:

Merrimack Repertory Theatre, 50 East Merrimack St., Lowell

COST:

$26 to $56;

Discounts for seniors and students

INFO:

978-654-4678;

www.merrimackrep.org

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